Posts Tagged ‘computer crime’

These days it seems to me that we live in an ever increasing disposable world – items that break are no longer repaired, they are simply replaced. Our TV breaks, and we just get a new one. Your printer breaks – why would you even bother to get it repaired? – just buy a new one – have you seen how little they cost ? I can buy a new printer (ok I admit it might not be a very good one, but it’ll do the job) for less than £50. Do you see what I mean? – we live in a disposable society.

I suggest that the only part of a computer system you would think to have repaired instead of replaced would be the hard disk, and only if you’ve got data on there that you want to recover that you haven’t got saved anywhere else.

Strange to think isn’t it that the funny looking little rectangular box you have holds all your data… If you’re a home user it’ll have your films, music and holiday snaps on. Perhaps it has pictures of the kids too. I’ve noticed that it’s often women who are more protective over family pictures than men. Men will often say that the data isn’t worth £500, but ask a woman if she’s prepared to spend £500 to get the pictures of her children back and the answer will often be a yes!.

If you use your computer for business purposes there may well be some sort of procedure in place to back up your data automatically – often to a central server of some kind or some cloud based system. Personally I have a mistrust of all cloud based systems. There are 2 main issues

The accounts are always hackable – if you can get in, so can someone else

The first point is obvious. The second takes a bit more explaining – US law (and with the co-operation of most of the G7 countries too it seems) as now legally entitled to look through your data. To paraphrase Obama – “If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” sort of misses the point doesn’t it ?

So in today’s world it’s all disposable except the data you value, and then, you need to be careful where you store it and who might be looking at it.